By John Gilmartin, vice president and general manager, Integrated Systems Business Unit, VMware

Today on main stage at VMworld 2015, we introduced VMware EVO SDDC (codenamed EVO:RACK), a VMware-validated software suite that provides customers the easiest, most effective path to build and operate a cloud based on the software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture. The goal of EVO SDDC is to dramatically simplify the time and effort it takes to organizations to architect, procure, deploy and manage the software and hardware infrastructure of an SDDC at data center scale.

With our vision for SDDC, VMware has led the way to the next-generation data center architecture. We believe the SDDC is the best architecture for the cloud. By adopting a software-driven, automated approach to data center design and management, organizations gain the IT efficiency, agility and control they need to compete and innovate while achieving tremendous savings — IT organizations can slash CAPEX by as much as 49 percent. (1)

The value of an SDDC-based private cloud has been well recognized by our customers who are asking us for way to accelerate their journey. With EVO SDDC, we are taking a major step forward in providing a turnkey solution that will help our customers to stand up a complete SDDC in a matter of hours and more efficiently manage it at data center scale.

Simplifying the Journey to a Complete SDDC

The challenge for customers considering an SDDC architecture is getting there quickly, efficiently, on budget and on time. EVO SDDC jump-starts the process, and gets you there in a fraction of the time.

VMware EVO SDDC provides a validated software suite of interoperable, tested components that VMware partners can leverage to deliver complete Integrated Systems. The systems take advantage of qualified hardware components and are pre-built and pre-racked providing an appliance-like experience that makes it easy for customers to deploy and operate.

Using hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) as a building block, VMware EVO SDDC delivers a complete SDDC by delivering compute, networking and storage from the hypervisor on a scale-out x86 server platform. The resulting system delivers an easier to deploy, agile, scalable and higher performance infrastructure. VMware EVO SDDC also adds network virtualization and automation capabilities. The solution integrates VMware vSphere, VMware NSX, VMware Virtual SAN along with the operations and management capabilities via VMware vRealize Operations and VMware vRealize Log Insight.

What makes the EVO SDDC unique is the new EVO SDDC Manager. This new software manages everything within that stack, including the hardware, from top to bottom reducing deployment of these large scale systems from days to hours. It intelligently automates the common tasks associated with server deployment as well as with on-going management and operations. It manages power-up, provisioning and monitoring of virtual and physical resources, including software, servers, top-of-rack and spine switches.

Partnering for Success

Today, we also announced partnerships with Dell, QCT and VCE. Our partners will manage factory-level integration of software and hardware across compute, storage and networking to deliver a fully racked system based on HCI architecture.

Together with our partners, we have conducted early field trials with prospects across various geographies for several months now. Use cases have included large scale deployments of virtual desktops, data center consolidations, next-generation private clouds, and more. Customers cut across a variety of industries including traditional enterprises to service providers. Read some of the comments from NTT America and TUI Group about their experiences here.

Our launch at VMworld today marks an important milestone, but work remains. Additional trials will continue throughout the remainder of 2015. We expect EVO SDDC to become available in H1 2016.

Be sure to follow us here for more details and the latest updates on EVO SDDC at VMworld and beyond.